For 25 years, the Edelman Trust Barometer has given us an annual temperature check on how much faith people have in institutions. This year’s results are ice cold.

Every January, the world’s most powerful leaders and business elites gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos to talk about the future.

Can’t believe in the Year of our Lord 2025 we’re still having the debate about whether or not forcing employees back into the office with a strict return-to-office mandate is a good idea, but here we are.

He’s back, and his second term promises the same volatility—no matter how much he calls his policies “common sense.”

What’s being described as a “conservative zeitgeist” isn’t what it seems. As usual, people are over-reading the election results, calling it a shift in the national mood. It is, but not for the reasons you think.

“Anticipatory obedience” is a term coined Timothy Snyder, a historian of eastern and central Europe. In On Tyranny, Snyder wrote, “Don’t hand over the power you have before you have to… “